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I am frustrated by the frenzied series of media interviewers paraded in front of us, asking the question "Why?" and the questioners not listening to the answers being given.....answers by the students of Columbine High School, answers by the experts, teachers and youth workers experiencing these realities daily. I was tipped over the edge and prompted to write by Hannah Gartner's interview last night on CBC's National Magazine with a very patient man, who, at least 9 times in the interview, gave her the answer &endash; an answer she still didn't seem to process. His answer ... and the answer from the students at Columbine.... Dylan and Eric were excluded; they were taunted by some athletes, the "in" crowd of the school on a daily basis. We might not like the answer, but Eric and Dylan &endash; they too are victims. The next question our media wants to ask: could it happen here? Roll the tape to another channel, with another story with a Canadian student saying. "Yes, some loser could come in here...." Do we see the connection? It is about the attitude that labels some people "losers".... that excludes them, attacks their self-esteem and their ability to function and interact in a healthy way. I know a vice-principal in an Ontario school who saw the "in" crowd, headed by some athletes in her school, making the daily lives of the "uncool" miserable. This "in" group abused their power and privilege by sitting as a collective in the main corridor of their school, through which every student had to pass, and commenting on the dress, the intelligence, the whatever of whomever their chosen victims of the day would be. This vice-principal simply started eating her lunch and talking to the "out" crowd on a daily basis in the same corridor. The fun was over; the bullies moved away; the school made a safer place to be. This vice-principal is role modelling for her staff, for her students on a daily basis, the principles of respect and inclusion .... the capacity for a single individual to say: "in my prescence you will not treat other people that way." To make our schools safe, to make our society safe, we do not have to fix "the losers, the loners, the outcasts," we have to change the attitudes of the "in" crowd; those who, however, unconsciously don't respect and create a meaningful place for all. Dominant groups never wake up until the tragedy is in their face; they fail to understand how they have excluded. and who and how they have hurt. Whether it be on the basis of athleticism, fashion, smarts, race, religion, money, gender, sexual orientation or..... whether it occurs on our native reserves, in South Africa, the streets of Toronto, in Croatia, Kosovo or Columbine High School, the issue is about eliminating exclusion and moving towards the sharing of meaningful, respected places in our schools and in our society for all. As one of our students wrote in The Students Commission latest National Youth Report: "we need to create more love...." Simple, but let's make it so...
 
tgmag@tgmag.ca
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